I wonder if the overall effect of the internet has been to create a cognitive environment which is better at producing minds that do “normal science” (working towards known and fixed goals within a given paradigm, “puzzle-solving” as Thomas Kuhn called it) and worse at producing the kinds of minds that do revolutionary, paradigm-shifting science.
That theory doesn’t seem to hold as well as Kuhn’s one, which is that the paradigmatisation of science creates the possibility of normal science, which being eminently scalable, makes most scientist normal scientist. Or put differently, if normal science is a possibility, we should expect almost all scientists to almost always conduct normal science.
Hmm yea I see your point. I guess what I was saying is that there are certain thought patterns and styles of cognition which may be more likely to stumble on the kind of ideas or do the kind of work that can potentially lead to paradigm shifts. Whether or not we are less able to think in this way now is definitely an open question but I think one we should worry about.
Agreed that it matters a lot to have people working on new paradigms. I guess the reason I’m absolutely not worried about lacking people like that in today’s scientific climate is that I don’t expect scientific education can get that out of someone. From my experience, there’s a small category of science students who care a lot about asking weird questions and questioning everything, and they almost never end up doing normal science.
Re: normal science
That theory doesn’t seem to hold as well as Kuhn’s one, which is that the paradigmatisation of science creates the possibility of normal science, which being eminently scalable, makes most scientist normal scientist. Or put differently, if normal science is a possibility, we should expect almost all scientists to almost always conduct normal science.
Hmm yea I see your point. I guess what I was saying is that there are certain thought patterns and styles of cognition which may be more likely to stumble on the kind of ideas or do the kind of work that can potentially lead to paradigm shifts. Whether or not we are less able to think in this way now is definitely an open question but I think one we should worry about.
Agreed that it matters a lot to have people working on new paradigms. I guess the reason I’m absolutely not worried about lacking people like that in today’s scientific climate is that I don’t expect scientific education can get that out of someone. From my experience, there’s a small category of science students who care a lot about asking weird questions and questioning everything, and they almost never end up doing normal science.